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ABRAHAM LINCOLN 




AN APPRECIATION 



Abraham Lincoln 

An Appreciation 






New York 
Francis D. Tandy Company 



Abraham Lincoln 

An Appreciation 



**In height, six feet four inches, 
nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on 
an average one hundred and eighty 
pounds; dark complexion, with coarse 
black hair and gray eyes. No other 
marks or brands recollected." Such 
is Abraham Lincoln' s own description 
of his personal appearance in 1859. 
The dry humor, the modest brevity, 
the quaint simplicity of this description 
are highly characteristic of the man 
who probably more than any other is 
enshrined in the hearts of the American 
people. 

The only one whose name might 
stand higher is George Washington, 
but he is admired and revered where 
Lincoln is loved. Both had great dif- 



4 Abraham Lincoln 

ficulties to overcome and overcame 
them gloriously. One was a man who 
had all the advantages of birth, wealth 
and education to prepare him for his 
task, while the other had nothing but 
his native good sense and his stern 
education in the ' ' University of Hard 
Knocks '* to fit him for his place amid 
the most stirring events of the Nine- 
teenth Century — a place where, in the 
limelight of the world's criticism, his 
very personal appearance made him 
subject to ridicule. But he filled it 
with such innate dignity and ability 
that his enemies were forced to love 
him and when the martyr's crown 
descended upon his brow a cry of grief 
arose from friend and foe alike. Punch 
of London had lampooned **his six 
feet four of awkwardness," had cari- 
catured the rail-splitter and canal- 
boatman of the White House and had 
antagonized every act of his admin- 
istration with all the subtle power of pen 



An Appreciation 5 

and pencil, yet when the horror of his 
assassination thrilled the world it pub- 
lished editorially Tom Taylor' s Poem : 

*' You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier I 
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace. 

Broad for the self-complacent British sneer. 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 

" Yes ; he had liv'd to shame me from my sneer. 

To lame my pencil and confute my pen, 
To msJce me own this hind of princes peer, 

This rail- splitter a true-born lung of men." 

A more sincere or graceful recant- 
ation has never been known in the 
history of the world. 

It was not wholly his tragic death, 
not wholly the critical times in which 
he lived that have made Lincoln be- 
loved, though the latter served to 
develop the underlying cause and the 
former to crystallize and perpetuate 
the affection which sprung from the 
intensely human character of the man 
himself. More than any other Prcs- 



{ 



6 Abraham Lincoln 

ident he was essentially a man of the 
people, in sympathy with all their needs, 
all their fears, all their ambitions. 

Born in poverty and obscurity of 
loving pioneer stock, working in the 
fields and woods almost from his in- 
fancy, he had little time or opportunity 
for school. He received his education 
from contact with his fellow men and, 
by his marvelous powers of observation, 
Jearned to understand their weakness 
and their strength and understanding, 
learned to sympathize. This sympa- 
thy was not confined to one class, for 
while his early life was given up almost 
entirely to manual labor, he soon 
became a practicing attorney and then 
was brought into close touch with the 
view-point of business and profes- 
sional men. 

Before this could be achieved he 
had to overcome his lack of school 
training, which he did largely by 



An Appreciation 7 

studying the only books to which 
he had access — The Bible, Aesop's 
Fables, Shakespeare and an English 
Grammar. With this limited equip- 
ment, and perhaps partly because of it, 
he acquired a power of expression 
which has been the cause of wonder 
to all literary critics. Untroubled by 
commentators, he absorbed much of 
the force of his great models. When 
he came to express his own ideas his 
mind was untrammelled by the arbi- 
trary rules of school masters. Knowing 
what he wanted to say, he said it 
without thought of style, but the classic 
simplicity of the books he had studied 
was so impressed upon his mind that 
his words burst forth in spontaneous 
eloquence. ** Because he was de- 
termined to be understood,'' says 
Richard Watson Gilder, * ' because he 
was honest, because he had a warm 
heart and a true, because he had read 
good books eagerly and not coldly, 



8 Abraham Lincoln 

and because there was In him a native 
good taste, as well as a strain of imag- 
ination, he achieved a singularly clear 
and forcible style, which took color from 
his own noble character, and became a 
thing individual and distinguished." 

The world has seen men born in 
obscurity develop the genius which' 
makes great generals, great statesmen, 
or great orators. Never before has the 
world seen one who, without the ad- 
vantages of what is termed **educa-. 
tion," combined all these qualities as did 
Lincoln and added to them a literary 
style which could illumine even the dry 
official documents of his office. * * Per- 
haps no point in the career of Abraham 
Lincoln, ' ' says Nicolay, * * has excited 
more surprise or comment than his re- 
markable power of literary expression. 
It was a constant puzzle to many men 
of letters how a person growing up 
without advantages of schools and 
books could have acquired the art which 



An Appreciation 9 

enabled him to write the Gettysburg 
Address and the Second Inaugural. *' 
Not one person out of a hundred 
ever looks upon Lincoln as a writer. 
Yet the unanimous verdict of critics is 
that his writings should be studied for 
their literary value alone if for nothing 
else and should be upon our library 
shelves beside those of Shakespeare or 
Emerson. Furthermore, they cover 
almost every conceivable subject of 
public importance. Many of these 
are before the American people to-day 
and can be solved only with a clear 
understanding of his point of view. 
Upon this the theorist and the practical 
statesman are agreed. Professor Fran- 
cis N. Thorpe, of the University of 
Pennsylvania, says: **His political 
ideas are, in our day at least, author- 
atative and classic, and the exhaustive 
study of them is the natural course for 
any person who expects to understand 
the political evolution since his death. 



lO Abraham Lincoln 

Aside from the fascinating character 
of the man himself, the study of his 
notions of representative government, 
in correlation with the course of events 
in which his was individually the leading 
mind, is an equipment for American 
citizenship; and such equipment was 
never more needed than at the present 
time." 

President Roosevelt, the practical 
statesman, expresses the same senti- 
ment, * * I feel that not only all lovers 
of the Republican party, but all be- 
lievers in the country should do 
everything in their power to keep 
alive the memory of Abraham Lincoln. 
The problems we have to solve as a 
nation now are not the same as those 
he had to face; but they can be solved 
aright only if we bring to the solution 
exactly his principles and his methods, 
his iron resolution, his keen good 
sense, his broad kindliness, his practical 
ability, and his lofty idealism." 



An Appreciabon II 

The love which Lincoln inspired 
seems to be growing year by year and 
to augment with the passage of time. 
There is no need to fear that the 
American people will fail to keep his 
memory green. The danger lies rather 
in another direction. As we get sep- 
arated from him more and more by the 
lapse of years and the passing away of 
his contemporaries, the danger will lie 
in our tendency to idealize and deify 
him. We can never forget Lincoln, 
but it were a pity to transform our love 
into worship and so rob him of his 
more human attributes. 

There is one way, and one way 
only, in which this can be avoided. 
That is to return to the man himself, 
not as we see him through the eyes of 
laudatory biographers, but as he was 
himself in all his thoughts and actions. 
In this sense he is to be found only by 
a study of his own writings. In no 



12 Abraham Lincoln 

other manner can the many-sidedness 
of Lincoln be so clearly displayed, nor 
the relation of events be so vividly 
shown. His lovableness is apparent 
when, in the midst of his debates with 
Douglas, he finds time to write a note 
guaranteeing the credit of a poor friend 
for furniture, or when, amidst the 
stirring times of 1864 and the pressing 
cares State imposed upon him, his fine 
sympathy compels him to write his 
celebrated letter to Mrs. Bixby. His 
writings are not a mere valuable col- 
lection of raw material for the future 
historian. They form a true history 
of himself and his times as written in 
his own words and by his own actions 
— a human document pulsating with 
the life and the love, the greatness and 
the generosity, the sympathy and the 
shrewdness of one of the most illus- 
trious men who ever lived. 

Among all his contemporaries there 
were two men who, above all others. 



An Appreciation 13 

had the opportunity and ability to col- 
lect his writings. These were his 
private secretaries, John G. Nicolay 
and John Hay. One of them, and 
generally both, were on duty at Lin- 
coln' s side every day through the 
pregnant years from 1860 to 1865. 
During these years they carefully col- 
lected the material from day to day. 
Lincoln gave them many of his most 
precious manuscripts and assisted and 
encouraged them in every way. 

For twenty years after Lincoln's 
death they devoted most of the time 
to the arrangement of the enormous 
amount of material at their disposal. 
The succeeding Secretaries of War 
gave them free and constant access to 
the official records. Col. Robert T. 
Lincoln turned over to them all his 
father's papers. They thus acquired 
a great number of private letters which 
had not come within the sphere of 
their official knowledge and which 



14 Abraham Lincoln 

added the charming personal element 
to the works of the great statesman. 

Owing to the obscurity of the first 
forty years' of Lincoln' s life, many of 
his writings and speeches inevitably es- 
caped even such conscientious workers 
as Nicolay and Hay. Fortunately his 
admirers in all parts of the country 
have been collecting everything per- 
taining to the great War President. 
FeWj if any, items of importance can 
have escaped the diligence of the 
numerous collectors, so that now 
would seem to be the opportune time 
to gather all this scattered material and, 
by adding it to that of Nicolay and 
Hay, make a complete and definitive 
collection of all Lincoln's writings, 
which shall stand as a permanent mon- 
ument to his genius. 

The sculptor' s chisel and the paint- 
ers brush have preserved to us faith- 
fully his form and features in all their 
rugged grandeur. A conscientious 



An Appreciation 15 

compilation of his works will preserve 
for all time to come a no less faithful 
portrayal of his mind in all its intricate 
workings and a record of all the varied 
parts he played in the stirring drama 
of life; the obscure country lawyer 
and politician, the lyceum lecturer, the 
sympathetic correspondent, the en- 
thusiastic captain of the Black Hawk 
War, the humorous popular legislator 
of a western State, the keen and fear- 
less fighter of the Debates, the orator 
of Cooper Union, the successful po- 
litical leader, the great statesman of 
the White House, the builder of vast 
armies from mere mobs of raw recruits, 
the military genius advising and direct- 
ing his generals, and through it all, 
the loving heart forgiving wherever 
forgiveness was possible, and punishing 
swiftly and mercifully where punish- 
ment was unavoidable. Such pictures 
cannot fail to arouse the love, stir the 
imagination, fire the patriotism, and 



1 6 Abraham Lincoln 

excite the emulation of all future gen- 
erations to whom he set such a noble 
example and for whom he so gloriously 
Mved and died. 



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THE COMPLETE WORKS 
c/ ABRAHAM LINCOLN ' 

EDITED BY 

JOHN G. NICOLAY and JOHN HAY 

New and Greatly Elnlaiged Edition 

CONTAINING ALL 

NEW MATERIAL DISCOVERED TO DATE 

With a General Introduction by 
RICHARD WATSON GILDER 

Special Introductions by 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
^ and other eminent men 

New Bibliography by 
JUDGE DANIEL FISH 

Adequate Annotations Exhaustive Index 

One hundred full-page illustrations 

Fac-amiles of Lincoln's Famous Documents 

Artistically Printed Handsomely Bound 



Full Particulars, Sample Pages and Illustrations will be 
sent free upon request 

FRANCIS D. TANDY COMPANY 

Dept. F, 38 E. 21st Street 

New York 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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